A Los Angeles-based nonprofit opened an early childhood center specifically for children whose families are seeking asylum in the United States. This center is one of the only places available where migrant children can play and learn for free.

What exactly is the ‘Green New Deal’ embraced by Ocasio-Cortez, other Democrats?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, leaves a photo opportunity with the female Democratic members of the 116th US House of Representatives outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, Jan. 4, 2019.

Newly-elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, has come along with increased talk of a “Green New Deal.” She even takes credit for pushing the concept into the national spotlight.

But the ideas at its center — decreased dependency on fossil fuels, a wave of jobs and economic opportunity — are not new.

Here’s a quick rundown of what the “Green New Deal” is all about.

What is the Green New Deal?

First, let’s talk about the original New Deal. It was a package of laws and programs produced in the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to the Great Depression. The package was meant to offer Americans relief and help them recover at a difficult economic time, and it fundamentally changed how many Americans view their government.

Now, let’s look at Ocasio-Cortez’s version. She’s released a general outline of what she hopes to see. Read it here. The basic goal, as she describes it, is “the transition of the United States economy to become greenhouse gas emissions neutral and to significantly draw down greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and oceans and to promote economic and environmental justice and equality.”

How would it actually work?

Specific details are hard to find, and it’s more of a broad debate and discussion among Democrats than any real policy at this point. In Ocasio-Cortez’s version of the idea, the Green New Deal would unfold over a decade.

Here are some key goals:

Make the U.S. entirely dependent on renewable power sources.

Make buildings, transportation and other infrastructure more energy efficient.

Build a national, “energy-efficient ‘smart’ grid”

Backers of a Green New Deal say it is good for the environment but also brings a windfall of economic opportunity. Ocasio-Cortez said she hopes it will “provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.”

So how would it be paid for?

The government would pay for it through investments in all these projects. Ocasio-Cortez’s plan cites the 2008 bank bailout and government programs during World War II as similar national efforts.

In 2008, the “Green New Deal Group” of the New Economics Foundation, a British think tank, published its own “A Green New Deal” report. It was written for the U.K. but offered global ideas to reverse climate change and dependency on fossil fuels.

This Green New Deal Group recommended steps such as the creation of a low-carbon energy system that would turn “every building into a power station” and employ a “carbon army” to power the “engine of environmental transformation.”

The United Nations was discussing similar ideas — presenting a Global Green New Deal — around the same time, also suggesting that the financial crisis of 2008 was the right time to push for new environmentally-friendly economic policies around the world.

“It is necessary to reduce carbon dependency and ecological scarcity not just because of environmental concerns but because this is the correct and only way to revitalize the economy on a more sustained basis,” said a 2009 report from the United Nations Environment Programme.

As of now, some Democratic members of Congress have signed on to support the ideas behind the Green New Deal and applauded Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign on the issue, but specific policy efforts are still a way off.

“It’s time to go big on this issue with bold solutions,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, told Fox News. “I welcome a Green New Deal and am excited to offer additional ideas to create meaningful jobs and address the crisis of climate change.”

One interesting note is that some of the supporters — including Swalwell — are considering 2020 presidential campaigns, suggesting this issue is about to garner even more national attention in the months ahead.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, has tweeted in support of a Green New Deal and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachussets, has also said she supports the “idea” of a Green New Deal, though neither got into the specifics of Ocasio-Cortez’s outline.

On Thursday, hundreds of U.S. environmental organizations signed a letter to Congress urging members to pursue a Green New Deal.

What do critics say about it?

Getting Congressional Republicans on board with anything like this is already proving difficult. Members of the Senate Republican Policy Committee issued a paper in December saying the concepts behind the Green New Deal are expensive and impossible.

Bloomberg Columnist Noah Smith points out that the “economic justice” piece of Ocasio-Cortez’s plan might get in the way of its climate specific goals.

“If the high taxes needed to pay for universal basic income and other purely redistributive programs end up discouraging business investment, or if shifting large numbers of people to government jobs reduces productivity, that could curb investment in the new technologies that the climate needs most,” he wrote. “And it could reduce demand for things like electric cars, which would work against the goal of pushing that technology forward.”

What does Friedman say about it now?

The columnist who coined the term in 2007 wrote a column this week revisiting the subject. You can read his entire column here. Friedman wrote that “clean energy is a problem of scale” and added:

To achieve scale, though, my view was that a Green New Deal had to be embraced by more than liberals. You had to reach conservatives and even climate deniers. My way of doing that was to focus on something we can all agree on: math. There are about 7.6 billion people on the planet today and, according to the United Nations, there will be 8.6 billion in 2030. A billion more people driving, flying, eating protein, building homes and drinking water in just more than a decade.

If they all adopt the per capita consumption habits of today’s Americans, we will burn up, heat up, eat up, plow up, choke up and smoke up the planet, whether the climate changes or not. That means that clean power, clean cars, clean manufacturing, clean water and energy efficiency have to be the next great global industries — otherwise, we humans are going to be a bad biological experiment, whether the climate changes or not.

Who believes that America can remain a great country and not lead the next great global industry? Not me. A Green New Deal, in other words, is a strategy for U.S. national security, national resilience, natural security and economic leadership in the 21st century. Surely some conservatives can support that.

So what’s going to happen?

We’ll be following the discussion.

What do you think will happen? Should politicians and others pursue this idea? Tell us.